The world of looking for pay dirt can quickly build up fortunes and just as easily wipe them out. With the year drawing to a close we take a look at eight junior miners that exemplified this rollercoaster.
Adrian Rauso
Battery metals miner IGO has firmed up its stake in a copper exploration patch in WA’s bustling Paterson region in the Pilbara, where red and yellow metals are all the rage.
Simone Grogan
‘This is a defining moment for Rio Tinto’s social license to operate.’
Paul-Alain Hunt
The call for Rio Tinto to abandon its primary London listing doesn’t make economic sense, chief executive Jakob Stausholm says, after an activist shareholder urged the miner to relocate to Australia.
Paul-Alain Hunt and Adrian Rauso
The mining arm of a Japanese behemoth will hand over a hefty sum to join Rio Tinto in unlocking a new WA copper province.
Resources companies must prepare like Olympians to stay ahead in a changing sector, says BHP executive Geraldine Slattery
BHP — like its key iron ore rival Rio Tinto — is being weighed down by grade control issues in the Pilbara, an analyst says.
Adrian Rauso and Daniel Newell
Newly listed Metals Acquisition is raising $140 million to pay down debts it loaded up on to buy a copper mine from Glencore in New South Wales.
Copper rallied back above $US10,000 a tonne and iron ore broke through $US100/t after China’s top leaders stepped up efforts to revive economic growth for the world’s largest metals consumer.
Annie Lee
Rio Tinto chairman Dominic Barton has declared the world needs more mines to cope with rising demand for key energy-transition metals like copper, with mergers and acquisitions unable to plug a supply gap.
Even for BHP — a $206 billion company — large, greenfield projects are scarce, and becoming more so. Deals, not discoveries, are grabbing the headlines.
Copper climbed to its highest level since mid-July as metals rallied on the Federal Reserve’s bid to defend US growth and the labor market with a half-point rate-cut.
Bloomberg
BHP is moving ahead with a major expansion of the Olympic Dam copper smelter and refinery in South Australia, with permit applications now before the state government.
Harry Brumpton
An ongoing union incursion into BHP’s powerhouse Pilbara iron ore operations might stop a multi-billion-dollar expansion from going ahead, warns the company’s chief Mike Henry.
Southern Africa’s railways are suddenly getting global attention and attracting billions of dollars in investment, with a race to secure copper supplies needed for the energy transition at its centre.
Matthew Hill
BHP and union leaders in Chile reached a preliminary wage agreement on Friday at the world’s biggest copper mine, causing the commodity’s price to fall.
James Attwood
Workers at BHP Group’s Escondida mine in Chile began a strike Tuesday after failing to reach a wage agreement with management, setting the stage for a major disruption at the world’s biggest copper operation.
After teasing the immense potential of a copper discovery in WA’s north for years Rio Tinto is now sticking this once-hyped project, or at least a piece of it, in the shopfront window.
IGO’s leader, Ivan Vella, says a more efficient supply chain in China has helped their lithium refiners avoid the same technical problems that have plagued Western Australia’s producers.
Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm has poured cold water on fears the $9.5b ‘Pilbara Killer’ Simandou mine will do as its unofficial nickname suggests.
Simone Grogan and Daniel Newell
BHP has moved on from rejection by Anglo American and found another way to get its hands on more South American copper.
A trawl for two metals of contrasting popularity across a landholding nearly 700 times the size of Rottnest Island has come up dry.
First Quantum Minerals reached an agreement with Jiangxi Copper, its second-largest shareholder, that limits the Chinese firm’s ownership of the Canadian copper producer.
There are tens of trillions of dollars worth of mineral wealth yet to be unlocked in Australia, according to a new global report.
